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The Wind Among the Reeds 



By the Same Author 
Poems 

The Secret Rose 
The Celtic Twilight 
John Sherman 



The Wind 
Among the Reeds 



W. B. YEATS 



H. 



JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

1899 



Copyright, i8gg 
By John Lane 

AM rights resirved 






(yf\ 



'■'*'°<»PIKS RECEIVED, 




The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. 






PAGE 

The Hosting of the Sidhe i 

The Everlasting Voices 3 

The Moods 4 

Aedh tells of the Rose in his Heart ... 5 

The Host of the Air 7 

Breasal the Fisherman ........ 10 

A Cradle Song 11 

Into the Twilight 13 

The Song of Wandering Aengus 15 

The Song of the old Mother 17 

The Fiddler of Dooney 18 

The Heart of the Woman 20 

Aedh Laments the Loss of Love 21 

Mongan laments the Change that has come 

UPON him and his Beloved 22 

V 



tAC» 

Michael Robartes bids his Beloved be at 

Peace 24 

Hanrahan reproves the Curlew 26 

Michael Robartes remembers forgotten 

Beauty 27 

A Poet to his Beloved 29 

Aedh gives his Beloved certain Rhymes . . 30 
To my Heart, bidding it have no Fear . .31 

The Cap and Bells 32 

The Valley of the Black Pig 35 

Michael Robartes asks Forgiveness because 

of his many moods 37 

Aedh tells of a Valley full of Lovers. . 40 

Aedh tells of the perfect Beauty .... 42 

Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge .... 43 
Aedh thinks of those who have spoken Evil 

OF his Beloved , . 44 

The Blessed 45 

The Secret Rose 47 

Hanrahan laments because of his Wander- 
ings 51 

The Travail of Passion 52 

vi 



PAGE 

The Poet pleads with his Friend for old 

Friends 54 

Hanrahan speaks to the Lovers of his Songs 

in coming Days 55 

Aedh pleads with the Elemental Powers . 57 

Aedh wishes his Beloved were dead ... 59 

Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven . . 60 

MONGAN thinks OF HIS PAST GREATNESS . , . 6l 

Notes 65 



THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE , 

The host is riding from Knocknarea 

And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare; 

Caolte tossing his burning hair 

And Niamh calling Away, come away: 

Empty your heart of its viortal dream. 

The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, 

Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound. 

Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam. 

Our arms are waving, our lips are apart; 

And if any gaze on our rushing band. 

We come between him and the deed of his 



We come between him and the hope of his 

heart. 
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day, 
And where is there hope or deed as fair? 
Caolte tossing his burning hair, 
And Niamh calling Away, come away. 



THE EVERLASTING VOICES 

O SWEET everlasting Voices be still; 
Go to the guards of the heavenly fold 
And bid them wander obeying your will 
Flame under flame, till Time be no more; 
Have you not heard that our hearts are old, 
That you call in birds, in wind on the hill, 
In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore? 
O sweet everlasting Voices be still. 



THE MOODS 

Time drops in decay, 
Like a candle burnt out, 
And the mountains and woods 
Have their day, have their day; 
What one in the rout 
Of the fire-born moods, 
Has fallen away? 



AEDH TELLS OF THE ROSE IN HIS 
HEART 

All things uncomely and broken, all things 

worn out and old, 
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak 

of a lumbering cart, 
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing 

the wintry mould. 
Are wronging your image that blossoms a 

rose in the deeps of my heart. 

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong 

too great to be told; 
S 



I hunger to build them anew and sit on a 

green knoll apart, 
With the earth and the sky and the water, 

remade, like a casket of gold 
For my dreams of your image that blossoms 

a rose in the deeps of my heart. 



THE HOST OF THE AIR 

O'Driscoll drove with a song, 
The wild duck and the drake, 
From the tall and the tufted reeds 
Of the drear Hart Lake. 

And he saw how the reeds grew dark 
At the coming of night tide. 
And dreamed of the long dim hair 
Of Bridget his bride. 

He heard while he sang and dreamed 

A piper piping away, 

And never was piping so sad. 

And never was piping so gay. 
7 



And he saw young men and young girls 
Who danced on a level place 
And Bridget his bride among them, 
With a sad and a gay face. 

The dancers crowded about him, 

And many a sweet thing said, 

And a young man brought him red wine 

And a young girl white bread. 

But Bridget drew him by the sleeve. 
Away from the merry bands. 
To old men playing at cards 
With a twinkling of ancient hands. 

The bread and the wine had a doom. 
For these were the host of the air; 
He sat and played in a dream 
Of her long dim hair. 



He played with the merry old men 
And thought not of evil chance, 
Until one bore Bridget his bride 
Away from the merry dance. 

He bore her away in his arms, 

The handsomest young man there. 

And his neck and his breast and his arms 

Were drowned in her long dim hair. 

O'DriscoU scattered the cards 

And out of his dream awoke: 

Old men and young men and young girls 

Were gone like a drifting smoke; 

Bnt he heard high up in the air 

A piper piping away. 

And never was piping so sad, 

And never was piping so gay. 
9 



BREASAL THE FISHERMAN 

Although you hide in the ebb and flow 

Of the pale tide when the moon has set, 

The people of coming days will know 

About the .casting out of my net, 

And how you have leaped times out of mind 

Over the little silver cords. 

And think that you were hard and unkind, 

And blame you with many bitter words. 



lO 



A CRADLE SONG 

The Danann children laugh, in cradles of 

wrought gold, 
And clap their hands together, and half close 

their eyes, 
For they will ride the North when the ger- 

eagle flies, 
With heavy whitening wings, and a heart 

fallen cold: 
I kiss my wailing child and press it to my 

breast, 

And hear the narrow graves calling my child 

and me. 

II 



Desolate winds that cry over the wandering 
sea; 

Desolate winds that hover in the flaming 
West; 

Desolate winds that beat the doors of 
Heaven, and beat 

The doors of Hell and blow there many a 
whimpering ghost; 

O heart the winds have shaken; the unap- 
peasable host 

Is comelier than candles before Maurya's 
feet. 



INTO THE TWILIGHT 

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn, 
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right; 
Laugh heart again in the gray twilight, 
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn. 

Your mother Erie is always young, 
Dew ever shining and twilight gray; 
Though hope fall from you and love decay. 
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue. 

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill : 

For there the mystical brotherhood 

Of sun and moon and hollow and wood 

And river and stream work out their will; 
13 



And God stands winding His lonely horn, 
And time and the world are ever in flight; 
And love is less kind than the gray twilight, 
And hope is less dear than the dew of the 



14 



THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS 

I WENT out to the hazel wood, 

Because a fire was in my head, 

And cut and peeled a hazel wand, 

And hooked a berry to a thread; 

And when white moths were on the wing. 

And moth-like stars were flickering out, 

I dropped the berry in a stream 

And caught a little silver trout. 

When I had laid it on the floor 

I went to blow the fire a-flame. 

But something rustled on the floor, 

And someone called me by my name: 
15 



It had become a glimmering girl 
With apple blossom in her hair 
Who called me by my name and ran 
And faded through the brightening air. 

Though I am old with wandering 
Through hollow lands and hilly lands, 
I will find out where she has gone, 
And kiss her lips and take her hands; 
And walk among long dappled grass. 
And pluck till time and times are done. 
The silver apples of the moon, 
The golden apples of the sun. 



l6 



THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER 

I RISE in the dawn, and I kneel and blow 
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; 
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep 
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; 
And the young lie long and dream in their 

bed 
Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and 

head, 
And their day goes over in idleness. 
And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress: 
While I must work because I am old, 

And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold. 

17 



THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY 

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, 
Folk dance like a wave of the sea; 
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet, 
My brother in Moharabuiee. 

I passed my brother and cousin : 
They read in their books of prayers; 
I read in my book of songs 
I bought at the Sligo fair. 

When we come at the end of time, 

To Peter sitting in state, 

He will smile on the three old spirits. 

But call me first through the gate; 
i8 



For the good are always the merry. 
Save by an evil chance, 
And the merry love the fiddle 
And the merry love to dance: 

And when the folk there spy me, 
They will all come up to me. 
With ' Here is the fiddler of Dooney ! 
And dance like a wave of the sea. 



10 



THE HEART OF THE WOMAN 

O WHAT to me the little room 

That was brimmed up with prayer and rest: 

He bade me out into the gloom, 

And my breast lies upon his breast. 

O what to me my mother's care, 
The house where I was safe and warm ; 
The shadowy blossom of my hair 
Will hide us from the bitter storm. 

hiding hair and dewy eyes, 

1 am no more with life and death, 
My heart upon his warm heart lies. 
My breath is mixed into his breath. 

20 



AEDH LAMENTS THE LOSS OF LOVE 

Pale brows, still hands and dim hair, 
I had a beautiful friend 
And dreamed that the old despair 
Would end in love in the end : 
She looked in my heart one day 
And saw your image was there ; 
She has gone weeping away. 



MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE 
THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND 
HIS BELOVED 

Do you not hear me calling, white deer with 

no horns ! 
I have been changed to a hound with one red 

ear; 
I have been in the Path of Stones and the 

Wood of Thorns, 
For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire 

and fear 
Under my feet that they follow you night and 

day. 

22 



A man with a hazel wand came without sound; 

He changed me suddenly; I was looking an- 
other way; 

And now my calling is but the calling of a 
hound ; 

And Time and Birth and Change are hurry- 
ing by. 

I would that the boar without bristles had 
come from the West 

And had rooted the sun and moon and stars 
out of the sky 

And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning 
to his rest. 



23 



MICHAEL ROBARTES BIDS HIS 
BELOVED BE AT PEACE 

I HEAR the Shadowy Horses, their long manes 
a-shake, 

Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes 
glimmering white; 

The North unfolds above them clinging, 
creeping night, 

The JEast her hidden joy before the morning 
break, 

The West weeps in pale dew and sighs pass- 
ing away. 

The South is pouring down roses of crimson 

fire: 

24 



O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless 

Desire, 
The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy 

clay: 
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your 

heart beat 
Over my heart, and your hair fall over my 

breast. 
Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight 

of rest, 
And hiding their tossing manes and their 

tumultuous feet. 



2^ 



HANRAHAN REPROVES THE 
CURLEW 

O, CURLEW, cry no more in the air, 
Or only to the waters in the West; 
Because your crying brings to my mind 
Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair 
That was shaken out over my breast: 
There is enough evil in the crying of wind. 



?6 



MICHAEL ROBARTES REMEMBERS 
FORGOTTEN BEAUTY 

When my arms wrap you round I press 

My heart upon the loveliness 

That has long faded from the world; 

The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled 

In shadowy pools, when armies fled; 

The love-tales wove with silken thread 

By dreaming ladies upon cloth 

That has made fat the murderous moth; 

The roses that of old time were 

Woven by ladies in their hair, 

The (Jew-cold lilies ladies bore 



Through many a sacred corridor 
Where such gray clouds of incense rose 
That only the gods' eyes did not close: 
For that pale breast and lingering hand 
Come from a more dream-heavy land, 
A more dream-heavy hour than this; 
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss 
I hear white Beauty sighing, too, 
For hours when all must fade like dew 
But flame on flame, deep under deep, 
Throne over throne, where in half sleep 
Their swords upon their iron knees 
Brood her high lonely mysteries. 



?8 



A POET TO HIS BELOVED 

I BRING you with reverent hands 
The books of my numberless dreams ; 
White woman that passion has worn 
As the tide wears the dove-gray sands, 
And with heart more old than the horn 
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time : 
White woman with numberless dreams 
I bring you my passionate rhyme. 



29 



AEDH GIVES HIS BELOVED CERTAIN 
RHYMES 

Fasten your hair with a golden pin, 
And bind up every wandering tress; 
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes : 
It worked at them, day out, day in, 
Building a sorrowful loveliness 
Out of the battles of old times. 

You need but lift a pearl-pale hand. 

And bind up your long hair and sigh; 

And all men's hearts must burn and beat; 

And candle-like foam on the dim sand, 

And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky. 

Live but to light your passing feet. 
30 



TO MY HEART, BIDDING IT HAVE 
NO FEAR 

Be you still, be you still, trembling heart; 
Remember the wisdom out of the old days : 
He who trembles before the flame and the flood, 
And the tvinds that blow through the starry ways, 
Let the starry winds and the flame and 
Cover over and hide, for he has no part 
With the proud, majestical multitude. 



31 



THE CAP AND BELLS 

The jester walked in the garden: 
The garden had fallen still ; 
He bade his soul rise upward 
And stand on her window-sill. 

It rose in a straight blue garment, 
When owls began to call : 
It had grown wise-tongued by thinking 
Of a quiet and light footfall ; 

But the young queen would not listen ; 

She rose in her pale night gown ; 

She drew in the heavy casement 

And pushed the latches down. 
32 



He bade his heart go to her, 
When the owls called out no more; 
In a red and quivering garment 
It sang to her through the door. 

It had grown sweet -tongued by dreaming, 
Of a flutter of flower-like hair; 
But she took up her fan from the table 
And waved it off on the air. 

' I have cap and bells ' he pondered, 
' I will send them to her and die; ' 
And when the morning whitened 
He left them where she went by. 

She laid them upon her bosom, 

Under a cloud of her hair, 

And her red lips sang them a love song : 

Till stars grew out of the air. 
3 33 



She opened her door and her window, 
And the heart and the soul came through, 
To her right hand came the red one, 
To her left hand came the blue. 

They set up a noise like crickets, 
A chattering wise and sweet. 
And her hair was a folded flower 
And the quiet of love in her feet. 



34 



THE VALLEY OF THE BLACK PIG 

The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: 

unknown spears 
Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened 

eyes, 
And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the 

cries 
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my 

ears. 
We who still labour by the cromlec on the 

shore, 
The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks 

drowned in dew, 

35 



Being weary of the world's empires, bow down 

to you 
Master of the still stars and of the flaming 

door. 



36 



MICHAEL ROBARTES ASKS FOR- 
GIVENESS BECAUSE OF HIS 
MANY MOODS 

If this importunate heart trouble your peace 

With words lighter than air, 

Or hopes that in mere hoping flicker and 

cease ; 
Crumple the rose in your hair; 
And cover your lips with odorous twilight 

and say, 

' O Hearts of wind-blown flame ! 

* O Winds, elder than changing of night and 

day, 

37 



* That murmuring and longing came, 

* From marble cities loud with tabors of old 

* In dove-gray faery lands; 

* From battle banners fold upon purple fold, 

* Queens wrought with glimmering hands; 

* That saw young Niamh hover with love-lorn 

face 

* Above the wandering tide ; 

* And lingered in the hidden desolate place, 

* Where the last Phoenix died 

* And wrapped the flames above his holy 

head; 

* And still murmur and long : 

' O Piteous Hearts, changing till change be 

dead 

'In a tumultuous song:' 

And cover the pale blossoms of your breast 
38 



With your dim heavy hair. 
And trouble with a sigh for all things long- 
ing for rest 
The odorous twilight there. 



39 



AEDH TELLS OF A VALLEY FULL 
OF LOVERS 

I DREAMED that I stood in a valley, and amid 
sighs, ■ 

For happy lovers passed two by two where I 
stood; 

And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily 
out of the wood 

With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream- 
dimmed eyes : 

I cried in my dream * O women bid the yoimg 

men lay 

4P 



' Theiv heads on your knees, and drown their eyes 
with your hair, 

* Or rememberhtg hers they will find no other 
face fair 

' Till all the valleys of the world have been with- 
ered away. ' 



41 



AEDH TELLS OF THE PERFECT 
BEAUTY 

O CLOUD-pale eyelids, dream -dimmed eyes 
The poets labouring all their days 
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme 
Are overthrown by a woman's gaze 
And by the unlabouring brood of the skies : 
And therefore my heart will bow, when dew 
Is dropping sleep, until God burn time, 
Before the unlabouring stars and you. 



42 



AEDH HEARS THE CRY OF THE 
SEDGE 

I WANDER by the edge 

Of this desolate lake 

Where wind cries in the sedge 

Until the axle break 

That keeps the stars in their round 

And hands hurl in the deep 

The banners of East and West 

And the girdle of light is unbound. 

Your head will not lie on the breast 

Of your beloved in sleep. 



43 



AEDH THINKS OF THOSE WHO HAVE 
SPOKEN EVIL OF HIS BELOVED 

Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair, 
And dream about the great and their pride; 
They have spoken against you everywhere, 
But weigh this song with the great and their 

pride ; 
I made it out of a mouthful of air, 
Their children's children shall say they have 

lied. 



44 



THE BLESSED 

CUMHAL called out, bending his head, 
Till Dathi came and stood, 
With a blink in his eyes at the cave mouth. 
Between the wind and the wood. 

And Cumhal said, bending his knees, 
' I have come by the windy way 
* To gather the half of your blessedness 
' And learn to pray when you pray, 

' I can bring you salmon out of the streams 

' And heron out of the skies. ' 

But Dathi folded his hands and smiled 

With the secrets of God in his eyes. 
45 



And Cumhal saw like a drifting smoke 
All manner of blessed souls, 
Women and children, young men with books. 
And old men with croziers and stoles. 

'Praise God and God's mother,' Dathi said, 

* For God and God's mother have sent 

' The blessedest souls that walk in the world 

* To fill your heart with content. ' 

' And which is the blessedest, ' Cumhal said, 
' Where all are comely and good ? 
' Is it these that with golden thuribles 
' Are singing about the wood ? ' 

' My eyes are blinking,' Dathi said, 
' With the secrets of God half blind, 

* But I can see where the wind goes 

' And follow the way of the wind ; 
46 



' And blessedness goes where the wind goes, 
'And when it is gone we are dead ; 
*I see the blessedest soul in the world 
'And he nods a drunken head. 

* O blessedness comes in the night and the day 
'And whither the wise heart knows; 

' And one has seen in the redness of wine 
' The Incorruptible Rose, 

* That drowsily drops faint leaves on him 

* And the sweetness of desire, 

' While time and the world are ebbing away 
' In twilights of dew and of fire. ' 



47 



THE SECRET ROSE 

Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, 
Enfold me in my hour of hours ; where those 
Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre, 
Or in the wine vat, dwell beyond the stir 
And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep 
Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep 
Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves 

enfold 
The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and 

gold 

Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose 

eyes 

48 



Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of elder 

rise 
In druid vapour and make the torches dim; 
Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him 
Who met Fand walking among flaming dew 
And lost the world and Eraer for a kiss ; 
And him who drove the gods out of their 

liss, 
And till a hundred morns had flowered red, 
Feasted and wept the barrows of his dead; 
And the proud dreaming king who flung the 

crown 
And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown 
Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep 

woods ; 

And him who sold tillage, and house, and 

goods, 

4 49 



And sought through lands and islands num- 
berless years, 
Until he found with laughter and with tears, 
A woman, of so shining loveliness. 
That men threshed corn at midnight by a 

tress, 
A little stolen tress. I, too, await 
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. 
When shall the stars be blown about the sky, 
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and 

die.? 
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind 

blows, 
Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose.-* 



50 



HANRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF 
HIS WANDERINGS 

WHERE is our Mother of Peace 
Nodding her purple hood? 

For the winds that awakened the stars 
Are blowing through my blood. 

1 would that the death-pale deer 
Had come through the mountain side, 
And trampled the mountain away, 
And drunk up the murmuring tide; 
For the winds that awakened the stars 
Are blowing through my blood. 

And our Mother of Peace has forgot me 

Under her purple hood. 
51 



THE TRAVAIL OF PASSION 

When the flaming lute-thronged angelic door 
is wide; 

When an immortal passion breathes in mor- 
tal clay; 

Our hearts endure the scourge, the plaited 
thorns, the way 

Crowded with bitter faces, the wounds in 
palm and side. 

The hyssop-heavy sponge, the flowers by 
Kidron stream : 

We will bend down and loosen our hair over 

you, 

52 



That it may drop faint perfume, and be 

heavy with dew, 
Lilies of death-pale hope, roses of passionate 

dream. 



53 



THE POET PLEADS WITH HIS FRIEND 
FOR OLD FRIENDS 

Though you are in your shining days, 

Voices among the crowd 

And new friends busy with your praise, 

Be not unkind or proud, 

But think about old friends the most : 

Time's bitter flood will rise, 

Your beauty perish and be lost 

For all eyes but these eyes. 



54 



HANRAHAN SPEAKS TO THE LOVERS 
OF HIS SONGS IN COMING DAYS 

O, COLLEENS, kneeling by your altar rails long 

hence, 
When songs I wove for my beloved hide the 

prayer, 
And smoke from this dead heart drifts 

through the violet air 
And covers away the smoke of myrrh and 

frankincense ; 
Bend down and pray for the great sin I wove 

in song, 

55 



Till Maurya of the wounded heart cry a sweet 

cry, 
And call to my beloved and me : * No longer 

fly 
*Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential 

throng. ' 



56 



AEDH PLEADS WITH THE 
ELEMENTAL POWERS 

The Powers whose name and shape no living 

creature knows 
Have pulled the Immortal Rose; 
And though the Seven Lights bowed in their 

dance and wept, 
The Polar Dragon slept, 
His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering 

deep to deep: 
When will he wake from sleep? 

Great Powers of falling wave and wind and 
windy fire, 

With your harmonious choir 

57 



Encircle her I love and sing her into peace. 

That my old care may cease; 

Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of 

sight 
The nets of day and night. 

Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no 

longer be 
Like the pale cup of the sea, 
When winds have gathered and sun and moon 

burned dim 
Above its cloudy rim; 
But let a gentle silence wrought with music 

flow 
Whither her footsteps go. 



58 



AEDH WISHES HIS BELOVED WERE 
DEAD 

Were you but lying cold and dead. 

And lights were paling out of the West, 

You would come hither, and bend your head, 

And I would lay my head on your breast ; 

And you would murmur tender words. 

Forgiving me, because you were dead : 

Nor would you rise and hasten away, 

Though you have the will of the wild birds, 

But know your hair was bound and wound 

About the stars and moon and sun : 

O Would beloved that you lay 

Under the dock-leaves in the ground, 

While lights were paling one by on§. 
59 



AEDH WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS 
OF HEAVEN 

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, 
Enwrought with golden and silver light, 
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths 
Of night and light and the half light, 
I MTould spread the cloths under your feet : 
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; 
I have spread my dreams under your feet; 
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. 



6Q 



MONGAN THINKS OF HIS PAST 
GREATNESS 

I HAVE drunk ale from the Country of the 

Young 
And weep because I know all things now : 
I have been a hazel tree and they hung 
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough 
Among my leaves in times out of mind : 
I became a rush that horses tread : 
I became a man, a hater of the wind, 
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his 

head 

6i 



Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the 

hair 
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies; 
Although the rushes and the fowl of the air 
Cry of his love with their pitiful cries. 



^2 



NOTES 



The Hosting of the Sidhe. 

The powerful and wealthy called the gods of 
ancient Ireland the Tuatha De Danaan, or the 
Tribes of the goddess Danu, but the poor called 
them, and still sometimes call them, the Sidhe, 
from Aes Sidhe or Sluagh Sidhe, the people 
of the Faery Hills, as these words are usually 
explained. Sidhe is also Gaelic for wind, and 
certainly the Sidhe have much to do with the 
wind. They journey in whirling winds, the 
winds that were called the dance of the daugh- 
ters of Herodias in the Middle Ages, Hero- 
dias doubtless taking the place of some old 
goddess. When the country people see the 
5 65 



leaves whirling on the road they bless them- 
selves, because they believe the Sidhe to be 
passing by. They are almost always said to 
wear no covering upon their heads, and to let 
their hair stream out; and the great among 
them, for they have great and simple, go much 
upon horseback. If any one becomes too much 
interested in them, and sees them over much, 
he loses all interest in ordinary things. I 
shall write a great deal elsewhere about such 
enchanted persons, and can give but an exam- 
ple or two now, 

A woman near Gort, in Galway, says: 
'There is a boy, now, of the Cloran's; but I 
would n't for the world let them think I spoke 
of him; it's two years since he came from 
America, and since that time he never went to 
Mass, or to church, or to fairs, or to market, 
or to stand on the cross roads, or to hurling, 
or to nothing. And if any one comes into the 
66 



house, it 's into the room he '11 slip, not to see 
them ; and as to work, he has the garden dug 
to bits, and the whole place smeared with cow 
dung ; and such a crop as was never seen ; and 
the alders all plaited till they look grand. 
One day he went as far as the chapel ; but as 
soon as he got to the door he turned straight 
round again, as if he hadn't power to pass it, 
I wonder he would n't get the priest to read a 
Mass for him, or something; but the crop he 
has is grand, and you may know well he has 
some to help him.' One hears many stories 
of the kind; and a man whose son is believed 
to go out riding among them at night tells me 
that he is careless about everything, and lies 
in bed until it is late in the day. A doctor 
believes this boy to be mad. Those that are 
at times ' away, ' as it is called, know all 
things, but are afraid to speak. A countryman 
at Kiltartan says, * There was one of the 
67 



Lydons — John — was away for seven years, 
lying in his bed, but brought away at nights, 
and he knew everything; and one, Kearney, 
up in the mountains, a cousin of his own, lost 
two hoggets, and came and told him, and he 
knew the very spot where they were, and told 
him, and he got them back again. But they 
were vexed at that, and took away the power, 
so that he never knew anything again, no more 
than another. ' This wisdom is the wisdom of 
the fools of the Celtic stories, that was above 
all the wisdom of the wise. Lomna, the fool 
of Fiann, had so great wisdom that his head, 
cut from his body, was still able to sing and 
prophesy ; and a writer in the ' Encyclopaedia 
Britannica ' writes that Tristram, in the oldest 
form of the tale of Tristram and Iseult, drank 
wisdom, and madness the shadow of wisdom, 
and not love, out of the magic cup. 

The great of the old times are among the 
68 



Tribes of Danu, and are kings and queens 
among them. Caolte was a companion of 
Fiann; and years after his death he appeared 
to a king in a forest, and was a flaming man, 
that he might lead him in the darkness. When 
the king asked him who he was, he said, * I am 
your candlestick.' I do not remember where 
I have read this story, and I have, maybe, half 
forgotten it, Niam was a beautiful woman of 
the Tribes of Danu, that led Oisin to the 
Country of the Young, as their country is 
called; I have written about her in 'The 
Wandering of Usheen ; ' and he came back, 
at last, to bitterness and weariness. 

Knocknarea is in Sligo, and the country 
people say that Maeve, still a great queen of 
the western Sidhe, is buried in the cairn of 
stones upon it. I have written of Clooth-na- 
Bare in * The Celtic Twilight. ' She ' went 
all over the world, seeking a lake deep enough 
69 



to drown her faery life, of which she had grown 
weary, leaping from hill to hill, and setting up 
a cairn of stones wherever her feet lighted, 
until, at last, she found the deepest water in 
the world in little Lough la, on the top of the 
bird mountain, in Sligo. ' I forget, now, 
where I heard this story, but it may have been 
from a priest at Coilooney. Clooth-na-Bare 
would mean the old woman of Bare, but is 
evidently a corruption of Cailleac Bare, the old 
woman Bare, who, under the names Bare, and 
Berah, and Beri, and Verah, and Dera, and 
Dhira, appears in the legends of many places. 
Mr. O' Grady found her haunting Lough Liath 
high up on the top of a mountain of the Fews, 
the Slieve Fuadh, or Slieve G-Cullain of old 
times, under the name of the Cailleac Buillia. 
He describes Lough Liath as a desolate moon- 
shaped lake, with made wells and sunken pas- 
sages upon its borders, and beset by marsh and 
70 



heather and gray boulders, and closes his 
* Flight of the Eagle ' with a long rhapsody 
upon mountain and lake, because of the heroic 
tales and beautiful old myths that have hung 
about them always. He identifies the Cailleac 
Buillia with that Meluchra who persuaded 
Fionn to go to her amid the waters of Lough 
Liath, and so changed him with her enchant- 
ments, that, though she had to free him because 
of the threats of the Fiana, his hair was ever 
afterwards as white as snow. To this day the 
Tribes of the Goddess Danu that are in the 
waters beckon to men, and drown them in the 
waters; and Bare, or Dhira, or Meluchra, or 
whatever name one likes the best, is, doubt 
less, the name of a mistress among them. 
Meluchra was daughter of Cullain; and Cullain 
Mr. O' Grady calls, upon I know not what 
authority, a form of Lir, the master of waters. 
The people of the waters have been in all ages 
71 



beautiful and changeable and lascivious, or 
beautiful and wise and lonely, for water is 
everywhere the signature of the fruitfulness of 
the body and of the fruitfulness of dreams. 
The white hair of Fionn may be but another of 
the troubles of those that come to unearthly 
wisdom and earthly trouble, and the threats 
and violence of the Fiana against her, a differ- 
ent form of the threats and violence the coun- 
try people use, to make the Tribes of Danu give 
up those that are * away. ' Bare is now often 
called an ugly old woman; but Dr. Joyce says 
that one of her old names was Aebhin, which 
means beautiful. Aebhen was the goddess of 
the tribes of northern Leinster; and the lover 
she had made immortal, and who loved her 
perfectly, left her, and put on mortality, to 
fight among them against the stranger, and 
died on the strand of Clontarf. 



72 



*Aedh,' 'Hanrahan' and 'Michael 
robartes ' in these poems. 

These are personages in ' The Secret Rose; ' 
but, with the exception of some of Hanrahan 's 
and one of Aedh's poems, the poems are not 
out of that book. I have used them in this 
book more as principles of the mind than as 
actual personages. It is probable that only 
students of the magical tradition will under- 
stand me when I say that ' Michael Robartes ' 
is fire reflected in water, and that Hanrahan 
is fire blown by the wind, and that Aedh, 
whose name is not merely the Irish form of 
Hugh, but the Irish for fire, is fire burning by 
itself. To put it in a different way, Hanrahan 
is the simplicity of an imagination too change- 
able to gather permanent possessions, or the 
adoration of the shepherds; and Michael 

n 



Robartes is the pride of the imagination brood- 
ing upon the greatness of its possessions, or 
the adoration of the Magi ; while Aedh is the 
myrrh and frankincense that the imagination 
offers continually before all that it loves. 



Aedh pleads with the Elemental Powers. 

MONGAN thinks OF HIS PAST GREATNESS. 

Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge. 

The Rose has been for many centuries a sym- 
bol of spiritual love and supreme beauty. The 
Count Goblet D'Alviella thinks that it was 
once a symbol of the sun, — itself a principal 
symbol of the divine nature, and the sym- 
bolic heart of things. The lotus was in some 
Eastern countries imagined blossoming upon 
the Tree of Life, as the Flower of Life, and 
is thus represented in Assyrian bas-reliefs. 
74 



Because the Rose, the flower sacred to the 
Virgin Mary, and the flower that Apuleius' 
adventurer ate, when he was changed out of 
the ass's shape and received into the fellow- 
ship of Isis, is the western Flower of Life, I 
have imagined it growing upon the Tree of 
Life. I once stood beside a man in Ireland 
when he saw it growing there in a vision, that 
seemed to have rapt him out of his body. 
He saw the garden of Eden walled about, and 
on the top of a high mountain, as in certain 
mediaeval diagrams, and after passing the Tree 
of Knowledge, on which grew fruit full of 
troubled faces, and through whose branches 
flowed, he was told, sap that was human souls, 
he came to a tall, dark tree, with little bitter 
fruits, and was shown a kind of stair or ladder 
going up through the tree, and told to go up ; 
and near the top of the tree, a beautiful woman, 
like the Goddess of Life associated with the 
75 



tree in Assyria, gave him a rose that seemed to 
have been growing upon the tree. One finds 
the Rose in the Irish poets, sometimes as a 
religious symbol, as in the phrase, ' the Rose 
of Friday,' meaning the Rose of austerity, in a 
Gaelic poem in Dr. Hyde's ' Religious Songs 
of Connacht;' and, I think, as a symbol of 
woman's beauty in the Gaelic song, * Roseen 
Dubh;' and a symbol of Ireland in Mangan's 
adaptation of ' Roseen Dubh, ' ' My Dark Rosa- 
leen,' and in Mr. Aubrey de Vere's 'The 
Little Black Rose. ' I do not know any evi- 
dence to prove whether this symbol came to 
Ireland with mediaeval Christianity, or whether 
it has come down from Celtic times. I have 
read somewhere that a stone engraved with a 
Celtic god, who holds what looks like a rose 
in one hand, has been found somewhere in 
England; but I cannot find the reference, 
though I certainly made a note of it. If the 
76 



Rose was really a symbol of Ireland among the 
Gaelic poets, and if ' Roseen Dubh ' is really a 
political poem, as some think, one may feel 
pretty certain that the ancient Celts associated 
the Rose with Eire, or Fotla, or Banba — 
goddesses who gave their names to Ireland — 
or with some principal god or goddess, for such 
symbols are not suddenly adopted or invented, 
but come out of mythology. 

I have made the Seven Lights, the constel- 
lation of the Bear, lament for the theft of the 
Rose, and I have made the Dragon, the con- 
stellation Draco, the guardian of the Rose, be- 
cause these constellations move about the pole 
of the heavens, the ancient Tree of Life in 
many countries, and are often associated with 
the Tree of Life in mythology. It is this 
Tree of Life that I have put into the ' Song 
of Mongan ' under its common Irish form of 
a hazel; and, because it had sometimes the 
77 



stars for fruit, I have hung upon it * the 
Crooked Plough ' and the ' Pilot ' star, as 
Gaelic-speaking Irishmen sometimes call the 
Bear and the North star. I have made it an 
axle-tree in * Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge,' 
for this was another ancient way of represent- 
ing it. 

The Host of the Air. 

Some writers distinguish between the Sluagh 
Gaoith, the host of the air, and Sluagh Sidhe, 
the host of the Sidhe, and describe the host of 
the air as of a peculiar malignancy. Dr. Joyce 
says, * of all the different kinds of goblins . . . 
air demons were most dreaded by the people. 
They lived among clouds, and mists, and rocks, 
and hated the human race with the utmost 
malignity.' A very old Arann charm, which 
contains the words ' Send God, by his strength, 
7S 



between us and the host of the Sidhe, between 
us and the host of the air, ' seems also to dis- 
tinguish among them. I am inclined, how- 
ever, to think that the distinction came in 
with Christianity and its belief about the 
prince of the air, for the host of the Sidhe, as I 
have already explained, are closely associated 
with the wind. 

They are said to steal brides just after their 
marriage, and sometimes in a blast of wind. 
A man in Galway says, ' At Aughanish there 
were two couples came to the shore to be mar- 
ried, and one of the newly married women was 
in the boat with the priest, and they going back 
to the island ; and a sudden blast of wind came, 
and the priest said some blessed words that were 
able to save himself, but the girl was swept. * 

This woman was drowned; but more often 
the persons who are taken * get the touch, ' as it 
is called, and fall into a half dream, and grow 
79 



indifferent to all things, for their true life has 
gone out of the world, and is among the hills 
and the forts of the Sidhe. A faery doctor has 
told me that his wife ' got the touch ' at her 
marriage because there was one of them wanted 
her; and the way he knew for certain was, that 
when he took a pitchfork out of the rafters, 
and told her it was a broom, she said, * It is a 
broom. ' She was, the truth is, in the magical 
sleep, to w;hich people have given a new name 
lately, that makes the imagination so passive 
that it can be moulded by any voice in any 
world into any shape. A mere likeness of 
some old woman, or even old animal, some one 
or some thing the Sidhe have no longer a use 
for, is believed to be left instead of the person 
who is 'away;' this some one or some thing 
can, it is thought, be driven away by threats, 
or by violence (though I have heard country 
women say that violence is wrong), which 
80 



perhaps awakes the soul out of the magical 
sleep. The story in the poem is founded on 
an old Gaelic ballad that was sung and trans- 
lated for me by a woman at Ballisodare in 
County Sligo; but in the ballad the husband 
found the keeners keening his wife when he got 
to his house. She was ' swept ' at once ; but 
the Sidhe are said to value those the most 
whom they but cast into a half dream, which 
may last for years, for they need the help of a 
living person in most of the things they do. 
There are many stories of people who seem to 
die and be buried — though the country people 
will tell you it is but some one or some 
thing put in their place that dies and is 
buried — and yet are brought back afterwards. 
These tales are perhaps memories of true awak- 
enings out of the magical sleep, moulded by 
the imagination, under the influence of a mysti- 
cal doctrine which it understands too literally, 
6 8i 



into the shape of some well-known traditional 
tale. One does not hear them as one hears 
the others, from the persons who are 'away, ' or 
from their wives or husbands ; and one old 
man, who had often seen the Sidhe, began one 
of them with * Maybe it is all vanity. ' 

Here is a tale that a friend of mine heard in 
the Burren hills, and it is a type of all: — 

' There was a girl to be married, and she 
did n't like the man, and she cried when the 
day was coming, and said she would n't go 
along with him. And the mother said, " Get 
into the bed, then, and I '11 say that you 're 
sick." And so she did. And when the man 
came the mother said to him, "You can't get 
her, she 's sick in the bed." And he looked in 
and said, "That 's not my wife that 's in the 
bed, it 's some old hag." And the mother 
began to cry and to roar. And he went out 
and got two hampers of turf, and made a fire, 
82 



that they thought he was going to burn the 
house down. And when the fire was kindled, 
"Come out now," says he, "and we '11 see who 
you are, when I '11 put you on the fire." And 
when she heard that, she gave one leap, and 
was out of the house, and they saw, then, it 
was an old hag she was. Well, the man asked 
the advice of an old woman, and she bid him 
go to a faery-bush that was near, and he might 
get some word of her. So he went there at 
night, and saw all sorts of grand people, and 
they in carriages or riding on horses, and 
among them he could see the girl he came to 
look for. So he went again to the old woman, 
and she said, "If you can get the three bits of 
blackthorn out of her hair, you '11 get her 
again." So that night he went again, and 
that time he only got hold of a bit of her hair. 
But the old woman told him that was no use, 
and that he was put back now, and it might be 
83 



twelve nights before he 'd get her. But on the 
fourth night he got the third bit of blackthorn, 
and he took her, and she came away with him. 
He never told the mother he had got her; but 
one day she saw her at a fair, and, says she, 
"That 's my daughter; I know her by the smile 
and by the laugh of her," and she with a shawl 
about her head. So the husband said, " You 're 
right there, and hard I worked to get her." 
She spoke often of the grand things she saw 
underground, and how she used to have wine 
to drink, and to drive out in a carriage with 
four horses every night. And she used to be 
able to see her husband when he came to look 
for her, and she was greatly afraid he 'd get a 
drop of the wine, for then he would have come 
underground and never left it again. And 
she was glad herself to come to earth again, 
and not to be left there.' 

The old Gaelic literature is full of the ap- 
84 



peals of the Tribes of the goddess Danu to 
mortals whom they would bring into their 
country; but the song of Midher to the beau- 
tiful Etain, the wife of the king who was 
called Echaid the ploughman, is the type 
of all. 

* O beautiful woman, come with me to the 
marvellous land where one listens to a sweet 
music, where one has spring flowers in one's 
hair, where the body is like snow from head to 
foot, where no one is sad or silent, where teeth 
are white and eyebrows are black . . . cheeks 
red like foxglove in flower. . . . Ireland is 
beautiful, but not so beautiful as the Great 
Plain I call you to. The beer of Ireland is 
heady, but the beer of the Great Plain is much 
more heady. How marvellous is the country I 
am speaking of ! Youth does not grow old 
there. Streams with warm flood flow there; 
sometimes mead, sometimes wine. Men are 
85 



charming and without a blot there, and love is 
not forbidden there. O woman, when you 
come into my powerful country you will wear a 
crown of gold upon your head. I will give you 
the flesh of swine, and you will have beer and 
milk to drink, O beautiful woman. O beau- 
tiful woman, come with me ! ' 

A Cradle Song. 

Michael ' Robartes asks Forgiveness be- 
cause OF HIS MANY MOODS. 

I use the wind as a symbol of vague desires 
and hopes, not merely because the Sidhe are in 
the wind, or because the wind bloweth as it 
listeth, but because wind and spirit and vague 
desire have been associated everywhere. A 
highland scholar tells me that his country 
people use the wind in their talk and in their 
proverbs as I use it in my poem. 



The Song of Wandering Aengus. 

The Tribes of the goddess Danu can take all 
shapes, and those that are in the waters take 
often the shape of fish. A woman of Burren, 
in Galway, says, ' There are more of them in 
the sea than on the land, and they sometimes 
try to come over the side of the boat in the 
form of fishes, for they can take their choice 
shape.' At other times they are beautiful 
women; and another Galway woman says, 
* Surely those things are in the sea as well as 
on land. My father was out fishing one night 
off Tyrone. And something came beside the 
boat that had eyes shining like candles. And 
then a wave came in, and a storm rose all in a 
minute, and whatever was in the wave, the 
weight of it had like to sink the boat. And 
then they saw that it was a woman in the sea 
87 



that had the shining eyes. So my father went 
to the priest, and he bid him always to take a 
drop of holy water and a pinch of salt out in 
the boat with him, and nothing could harm 
him.' 

The poem was suggested to me by a Greek 
folk song; but the folk belief of Greece is very 
like that of Ireland, and I certainly thought, 
when I wrote it, of Ireland, and of the spirits 
that are in Ireland. An old man who was cut- 
ting a quickset hedge near Gort, in Galway, 
said, only the other day, ' One time I was cut- 
ting timber over in Inchy, and about eight 
o'clock one morning, when I got there, I saw 
a girl picking nuts, with her hair hanging down 
over her shoulders ; brown hair ; and she had 
a good, clean face, and she was tall, and noth- 
ing on her head, and her dress no way gaudy, 
but simple. And when she felt me coming 
she gathered herself up, and was gone, as if 



the earth had swallowed her up. And I fol- 
lowed her, and looked for her, but I never 
could see her again from that day to this, never 
again. ' 

The county Galway people use the word 
* clean ' in its old sense of fresh and comely. 

Michael Robartes bids his Beloved be 
AT Peace. 

November, the old beginning of winter, or 
of the victory of the Fomor, or powers of death, 
and dismay, and cold, and darkness, is asso- 
ciated by the Irish people with the horse- 
shaped Pucas, who are now mischievous spirits, 
but were once Fomorian divinities. I think 
that they may have some connection with the 
horses of Mannannan, who reigned over the 
country of the dead, where the Fomorian 
Tethra reigned also; and the horses of Man- 
89 



nannan, though they could cross the land as 
easily as the sea, are constantly associated with 
the waves. Some neo-platonist, I forget who, 
describes the sea as a symbol of the drifting 
indefinite bitterness of life, and I believe there 
is like symbolism intended in the many Irish 
voyages to the islands of enchantment, or that 
there was, at any rate, in the mythology out of 
which these stories have been shaped. I follow 
much Irish and other mythology, and the 
magical tradition, in associating the North 
with night and sleep, and the East, the place 
of sunrise, with hope, and the South, the place 
of the sun when at its height, with passion and 
desire, and the West, the place of sunset, with 
fading and dreaming things. 



90 



MONGAN LAMENTS THE CHANGE THAT HAS 
COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED. 

HANRAHAN LAMENTS BECAUSE OF HIS WAN- 
DERINGS. 

My deer and hound are properly related to 
the deer and hound that flicker in and out of 
the various tellings of the Arthurian legends, 
leading different knights upon adventures, and 
to the hounds and to the hornless deer at the 
beginning of, I think, all tellings of Oisin's 
journey to the country of the young. The 
hound is certainly related to the Hounds of 
Annwvyn or of Hades, who are vi^hite, and have 
red ears, and were heard, and are, perhaps, still 
heard by Welsh peasants following some fly- 
ing thing in the night winds ; and is probably 
related to the hounds that Irish country people 
believe will awake and seize the souls of the 
dead if you lament them too loudly or too soon, 
91 



and to the hound the son of Setanta killed, on 
what was certainly, in the first form of the tale, 
a visit to the Celtic Hades. An old woman 
told a friend and myself that she saw what she 
thought were white birds, flying over an en- 
chanted place, but found, when she got near, 
that they had dog's heads; and I do not doubt 
that my hound and these dog-headed birds are 
of the same family. I got my hound and deer 
out of a last century Gaelic poem about 
Oisin's journey to the country of the young. 
After the hunting of the hornless deer, that 
leads him to the seashore, and while he is rid- 
ing over the sea with Niam, he sees amid the 
waters — I have not the Gaelic poem by me, 
and describe it from memory — a young man 
following a girl who has a golden apple, and 
afterwards a hound with one red ear following 
a deer with no horns. This hound and this 
deer seem plain images of the desire of man 
92 



' which is for the woman, ' and ' the desire of 
the woman which is for the desire of the 
man,' and of all desires that are as these. 
I have read them in this way in ' The Wander- 
ings of Usheen ' or Oisin, and have made 
my lover sigh because he has seen in their 
faces 'the immortal desire of immortals.' A 
solar mythologist would perhaps say that the 
girl with the golden apple was once the win- 
ter, or night, carrying the sun away, and 
the deer without horns, like the boar without 
bristles, darkness flying the night. He would 
certainly, I think, say that when Cuchullain, 
whom Professor Rhys calls a solar hero, 
hunted the enchanted deer of Slieve Fuadh, 
because the battle fury was still on him, 
he was the sun pursuing clouds, or cold, or 
darkness. I have understood them in this 
sense in * Hanrahan laments because of his 
wandering,' and made Hanrahan long for the 
93 



day when they, fragments of ancestral dark- 
ness, will overthrow the world. The desire of 
the woman, the flying darkness, it is all one! 
The image — across, a man preaching in the 
wilderness, a dancing Salome, a lily in a girl's 
hand, a flame leaping, a globe with wings, a 
pale sunset over still waters — is an eternal act ; 
but our understandings are temporal and 
understand but a little at a time. 

The man in my poem who has a hazel wand 
may have been Aengus, Master of Love; and 
I have made the boar without bristles come 
out of the West, because the place of sunset 
was in Ireland, as in other countries, a place 
of symbolic darkness and death. 

The Cap and Bells. 

I DREAMED this story exactly as I have writ- 
ten it, and dreamed another long dream after 
94 



it, trying to make out its meaning, and whether 
I was to write it in prose or verse. The first 
dream was more a vision than a dream, for it 
was beautiful and coherent, and gave me the 
sense of illumination and exaltation that one 
gets from visions, while the second dream was 
confused and meaningless. The poem has 
always meant a great deal to me, though, as is 
the way with symbolic poems, it has not always 
meant quite the same thing. Blake would have 
said * the authors are in eternity, ' and I am 
quite sure they can only be questioned in 
dreams. 

The Valley of the Black Pig. 

All over Ireland there are prophecies of the 
coming rout of the enemies of Ireland, in a 
certain Valley of the Black Pig, and these pro- 
phecies are, no doubt, now, as they were in the 
95 



Fenian days, a political force. I have heard 
of one man who would not give any money 
to the Land League, because the Battle could 
not be until the close of the century; but, as 
a rule, periods of trouble bring prophecies 
of its near coming. A few years before my 
time, an old man who lived at Lisadell, in 
Sligo, used to fall down in a fit and rave out 
descriptions of the Battle ; and a man in Sligo 
has told me that it will be so great a battle 
that the horses shall go up to their fetlocks in 
blood, and that their girths, when it is over, 
will rot from their bellies for lack of a hand to 
unbuckle them. The battle is a mythological 
battle, and the black pig is one with the bris- 
tleless boar, that killed Dearmod, in Novem- 
ber, upon the western end of Ben Bulben; 
Misroide, MacDatha's son, whose carving 
brought on so great a battle ; ' the croppy black 
sow, ' and * the cutty black sow ' of Welsh 
96 



November rhymes (' Celtic Heathendom/ pages 
509-516); the boar that killed Adonis; the 
boar that killed Attis; and the pig embodi- 
ment of Typhon ('Golden Bough,' II. pages 
26, 31). The pig seems to have been origin- 
ally a genius of the corn, and, seemingly be- 
cause the too great power of their divinity 
makes divine things dangerous to mortals, its 
flesh was forbidden to many eastern nations; 
but as the meaning of the prohibition was 
forgotten, abhorrence took the place of rever- 
ence, pigs and boars grew into types of evil, 
and were described as the enemies of the very 
gods they once typified ('Golden Bough,' 11. 
26-31, 56-57). The Pig would, therefore, be- 
come the Black Pig, a type of cold and of winter 
that awake in November, the old beginning of 
winter, to do battle with the summer, and with 
the fruit and leaves, and finally, as I suggest; 
and as I believe, for the purposes of poetry; 
7 97 



of the darkness that will at last destroy the 
gods and the world. The country people say 
there is no shape for a spirit to take so danger- 
ous as the shape of a pig ; and a Galway black- 
smith — and blacksmiths are thought to be 
especially protected — says he would be afraid 
to meet a pig on the road at night ; and another 
Galway man tells this story : * There was a man 
coming the road from Gort to Garryland one 
night, and he had a drop taken; and before 
him, on the road, he saw a pig walking; and 
having a drop in, he gave a shout, and made a 
kick at it, and bid it get out of that. And by 
the time he got home, his arm was swelled 
from the shoulder to be as big as a bag, and he 
could n't use his hand with the pain of it. And 
his wife brought him, after a few days, to a 
woman that used to do cures at Rahasane. 
And on the road all she could do would hardly 
keep him from lying down to sleep on the grass. 



And when they got to the woman she knew all 
that happened; and, says she, it 's well for you 
that your wife did n't let you fall asleep on the 
grass, for if you had done that but even for one 
instant, you 'd be a lost man.' 

It is possible that bristles were associated 
with fertility, as the tail certainly was, for a 
pig's tail is stuck into the ground in Courland, 
that the corn may grow abundantly, and the 
tails of pigs, and other animal embodiments of 
the corn genius, are dragged over the ground 
to make it fertile in different countries. Pro- 
fessor Rhys, who considers the bristleless boar 
a symbol of darkness and cold, rather than of 
winter and cold, thinks it was without bristles 
because the darkness is shorn away by the sun. 
It may have had different meanings, just as the 
scourging of the man-god has had different 
though not contradictory meanings in different 
epochs of the world. 

99 



The Battle should, I believe, be compared 
with three other battles; a battle the Sidhe 
are said to fight when a person is being taken 
away by them ; a battle they are said to fight 
in November for the harvest ; the great battle 
the Tribes of the goddess Danu fought, accord- 
ing to the Gaelic chroniclers, with the Fomor 
at Moy Tura, or the Towery Plain. 

I have heard of the battle over the dying both 
in County Galway and in the Isles of Arann, 
an old Arann fisherman having told me that it 
was fought over two of his children, and that 
he found blood in a box he had for keeping fish, 
when it was over; and I have written about it, 
and given examples elsewhere. A faery doctor, 
on the borders of Galway and Clare, explained 
it as a battle between the friends and enemies 
of the dying, the one party trying to take them, 
the other trying to save them from being taken. 
It may once, when the land of the Sidhe was 



the only other world, and when every man who 
died was carried thither, have always accom- 
panied death. I suggest that the battle be- 
tween the Tribes of the goddess Danu, the 
powers of light, and warmth, and fruitfulness, 
and goodness, and the Fomor, the powers of 
darkness, and cold, and barrenness, and bad- 
ness upon the Towery Plain, was the estab- 
lishment of the habitable world, the rout of the 
ancestral darkness; that the battle among the 
Sidhe for the harvest is the annual battle of 
summer and winter; that the battle among the 
Sidhe at a man's death is the battle of life and 
death ; and that the battle of the Black Pig is 
the battle between the manifest world and the 
ancestral darkness at the end of all things; 
and that all these battles are one, the battle 
of all things with shadowy decay. Once a 
symbolism has possessed the imagination of 
large numbers of men, it becomes, as I believe, 

lOI 



an embodiment of disembodied powers, and 
repeats itself in dreams and visions, age after 
age. 

The Secret Rose. 

I FIND that I have unintentionally changed 
the old story of Conchobar's death. He did 
not see the crucifixion in a vision, but was told 
about it. He had been struck by a ball, made 
of the dried brain of a dead enemy, and hurled 
out of a sling; and this ball had been left in 
his head, and his head had been mended, the 
Book of Leinster says, with thread of gold be- 
cause his hair was like gold. Keating, a writer 
of the time of Elizabeth, says, * In that state 
did he remain seven years, until the Friday on 
which Christ was crucified, according to some 
historians; and when he saw the unusual 
changes of the creation and the eclipse of the 
sun and the moon at its full, he asked of 

102 



Bucrach, a Leinster Druid, who was along with 
him, what was it that brought that unusual 
change upon the planets of Heaven and Earth. 
"Jesus Christ, the son of God," said the Druid, 
"who is now being crucified by the Jews." 
"That is a pity," said Conchobar; "were I in 
his presence I would kill those who were put- 
ting him to death." And with that he brought 
out his sword, and rushed at a woody grove 
which was convenient to him, and began to 
cut and fell it ; and what he said was, that if 
he were among the Jews that was the usage he 
would give them, and from the excessiveness of 
his fury which seized upon him, the ball started 
out of his head, and some of the brain came 
after it, and in that way he died. The wood 
of Lanshraigh, in Feara Rois, is the name by 
which that shrubby wood is called. ' 

I have imagined Cuchullain meeting Fand 
'walking among flaming dew.' The story of 
103 



their love is one of the most beautiful of our 
old tales. Two birds, bound one to another 
with a chain of gold, came to a lake side where 
Cuchullain and the host of Uladh was encamped, 
and sang so sweetly that all the host fell into a 
magic sleep. Presently they took the shape 
of two beautiful women, and cast a magical 
weakness upon Cuchullain, in which he lay 
for a year. At the year's end an Aengus, 
who was probably Aengus the master of love, 
one of the greatest of the children of the 
goddess Danu, came and sat upon his bedside, 
and sang how Fand, the wife of Mannannan, 
the master of the sea, and of the islands of 
the dead, loved him; and that if he would 
come into the country of the gods, where 
there was wine and gold and silver, Fand, 
and Laban her sister, would heal him of his 
magical weakness. Cuchullain went to the 
country of the gods, and, after being for a 
104 



month the lover of Fand, made her a promise 
to meet her at a place called ' the Yew at the 
Strand's End,' and came back to the earth. 
Emer, his mortal wife, won his love again, 
and Mannannan came to * the Yew at the 
Strand's End,' and carried Fand away. When 
Cuchullain saw her going, his love for her fell 
upon him again, and he went mad, and wan- 
dered among the mountains without food or 
drink, until he was at last cured by a Druid 
drink of forgetfulness. 

I have founded the man ' who drove the gods 
out of their Liss,' or fort, upon something I 
have read about Caolte after the battle of 
Gabra, when almost all his companions were 
killed, driving the gods out of their Liss, 
either at Osraighe, now Ossory, or at Eas 
Ruaidh, now Asseroe, a waterfall at Bally- 
shannon, where Ilbreac, one of the children 
of the goddess Danu, had a Liss. I am writ- 
105 



ing away from most of my books, and have not 
been able to find the passage; but I certainly 
read it somewhere. 

I have founded * the proud dreaming king ' 
upon Fergus, the son of Roigh, the legendary 
poet of * the quest of the bull of Cualge,' as he 
is in the ancient story of Deirdre, and in 
modern poems by Ferguson. He married 
Nessa, and Ferguson makes him tell how she 
took him * captive in a single look. ' 

* I am but an empty shade, 
Far from life and passion laid ; 
Yet does sweet remembrance thrill 
All my shadowy being still.' 

Presently, because of his great love, he gave 
up his throne to Conchobar, her son by another, 
and lived out his days feasting, and fighting, 
and hunting. His promise never to refuse a 
feast from a certain comrade, and the mischief 
that came by his promise, and the vengeance 
1 06 



he took afterwards, are a principal theme of the 
poets, I have explained my imagination of him 
in ' Fergus and the Druid,' and in a little song 
in the second act of ' The Countess Kathleen. ' 

I have founded him ' who sold tillage, and 

house, and goods,' upon something in * The 

Red Pony,' a folk tale in Mr. Larminie's 

* West Irish Folk Tales. ' A young man * saw 

a light before him on the high road. When he 

came as far, there was an open box on the road, 

and a light coming up out of it. He took up 

the box. There was a lock of hair in it. 

Presently he had to go to become the servant 

of a king for his living. There were eleven 

boys. When they were going out into the 

stable at ten o'clock, each of them took a light 

but he. He took no candle at all with him. 

Each of them went into his own stable. When 

he went into his stable he opened the box. 
107 



He left it in a hole in the wall. The light was 
great. It was twice as much as in the other 
stables. ' The king hears of it, and makes him 
show him the box. The king says, ' You must 
go and bring me the woman to whom the 
hair belongs.' In the end, the young man, 
and not the king, marries the woman. 



[o8 



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